America 250 Lecture Series
Taliesin Preservation, in collaboration with the Taliesin Institute and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, is offering a series of four lectures that explore Frank Lloyd Wright’s ideas about architecture and society in the modern world.
Frank Lloyd Wright and Ralph Waldo Emerson: Reclaiming the Promise of the American Project with Professor Ayad Rahmani, Washington State University.
By the middle of the 19th Century America was losing ground, socially and politically, many questioning its continued claim on freedom. How to get the country back on track was the concern of many leading cultural figures, including F.L. Wright. This presentation will examine the manner in which Wright looked to R.W. Emerson to restore to Americans the capacity for insight and innovation
About the Speaker
Ayad Rahmani is a Professor of Architecture at Washington State University where he teaches courses on Design and Theory. He is the author of three books, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Ralph Waldo Emerson: Transforming the American Mind (2023). His research focuses on the intersection of architecture and critical theory, looking at literature to examine themes in modern culture. He has written widely on urban planning, architecture, and the link between modern space and psychology, including an essay on Wright and Democracy, which appeared in the Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly in the summer of 2020. He is the architectural critic of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News. He lives in Pullman, Washington.
About the Event
Frank Lloyd Wright in the 21st Century with Professor Anna Andrzejewski
Anna Andrzejewski, the Frank Lloyd Wright Professor of Modern American Architecture at UW–Madison will explore how Wright x1890’s Wisconsin roots shaped his work and why his ideas about nature, technology, and community are still relevant in an age of AI and climate change.
Location:
Hillside Theater, Spring Green, WI.
Date:
September 11, 2026
Time:
Doors open 5:00 p.m., program at 5:30 p.m.
Price:
Adults $15, Students $10
About the Speaker
Anna is Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A former Director of the Center for Culture, History, and Environment, she is also an affiliate of the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, the Department of Geography, and the Department of Architecture (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). She teaches courses in the history of American art, architecture and material culture.
About the Event
“I Turned To This Hill”: Wright and the Driftless Area Landscape with Curt Meine
Curt Meine, Senior Fellow, Aldo Leopold Foundation and Center for Humans & Nature and Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison will explore the relationship between the Driftless Area landscape and Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural vision, and what lessons that relationship holds for contemporary community resilience and environmental stewardship.
Location:
Hillside Theater, Spring Green, WI.
Date:
October 3, 2026
Time:
Doors open 5:00 p.m., program at 5:30 p.m.
Price:
Adults $15, Students $10
About the Speaker
Curt Meine is a conservation biologist and historian with an interdisciplinary academic background in environmental science and the humanities, having earned his MS and PhD in land resources through UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute. He serves as senior fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation and the Center for Humans and Nature; as research associate with the International Crane Foundation; and as adjunct associate professor at the UW-Madison.
Calendar 2026 – 2027 Public Events
Join us for Our Stories: “Ocatilla: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Desert Masterpiece” at the Chandler Museum, featuring Jennifer Gray, PhD, VP of the Taliesin Institute.
Saturday, September 26 | 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.
Chandler Museum, Chandler, Arizona.
In 1929, Frank Lloyd Wright built one of his most experimental projects right here in Chandler, Arizona: a canvas-roofed desert camp he called Ocatilla. Though it survived only one season before being destroyed by fire, the project became an important testing ground for Wright’s ideas about architecture, landscape, and life in the desert.
Jennifer Gray, PhD, will explore how Ocatilla and Wright’s other Arizona projects served as laboratories for responding to extreme environments and resource constraints, and how those ideas would continue to evolve in his later desert work.
The event is free, but registration is requested. Come discover the story of a lost Chandler project that helped shape Wright’s vision for desert architecture.
Ocatilla: Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Lost Desert Masterpiece
Opening October 27, 2026
This fall, the Organic Architecture + Design Archives (OA+D), in partnership with the Chandler Museum, the Taliesin Institute and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, will present Ocatilla: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Desert Masterpiece.
The exhibition brings to life Wright’s remarkable 1929 desert camp, an experimental, canvas-roofed encampment that existed for only a single season, yet fundamentally shaped his thinking about architecture, environment, and life in the desert.
Calendar 2026-2027 Academic Events, Not Open To Public
October 20, 2026
9:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Grand Canyon University Honors College Visit
Location: Taliesin West
October 27, 2026
3:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.
Universidad de la República Visit
Location: Taliesin West
November 13-14, 2026
Florida Southern College
Location: Chandler Museum /Taliesin West
November 19-28, 2026
Cairo Design Week
Location: Ras el Bar Project, Cairo, Egypt
January 11, 2027
January 25-27, 2027
ASU Extreme Environments Design Studio —Session 1
Topic: Desert as a laboratory for exploring the ultimate desert and extreme environment: SPACE
Location: Taliesin West (TBD)
January 26, 2027
ASU Extreme Environment /FLWF Lecture – Session 1
Location: Taliesin West
February 1–3, 2027
February 22-24, 2027
ASU Extreme Environments Design Studio — Session 2
Topic: Desert as a laboratory for exploring the ultimate desert and extreme environment: SPACE
Location: Taliesin West (TBD)
February 23, 2027
ASU Extreme Environments / FLWF Lecture – Session 2
Location: Taliesin West
February 9-13, 2027
Observations (speaker series).
Topics: FLW x Prairie School. FLW x Australia
Location: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
March 1–3, 2027
March 15-17, 2027
ASU Extreme Environments Design Studio — Session 3
Topic: Desert as a laboratory for exploring the ultimate desert and extreme environment: SPACE
Location: Taliesin West
March 16, 2027
ASU Extreme Environments / FLWF Lecture –Session 3
Location: Taliesin West
April 5–7, 2027
(TBD)
(cancel)
ASU Extreme Environments Design Studio — Session 4
Location: Taliesin West
April 28, 2027
ASU Studio — Celebration
Location: Taliesin West
April 28-30, 2027
(30th would be the final crit/presentation and reception)
ASU Extreme Environments Design Studio — Final Session
Location: Taliesin West
May 7, 2027
ASU Studio — Final Review
Location: Taliesin West, Drafting Studio (Board Room backup)
May 18-25, 2027
University of Oklahoma Residency
Location: Taliesin
The Conservancy’s 37th annual conference in conjuction with the Taliesin Institute will take place in Scottsdale, Arizona, November 4-8. It will explore the contradictions and paradoxes of living in the desert and the lessons we can take from Wright’s designs for it. How did the beautiful yet hostile environment shape Wright’s organic approach to architecture? How can we sustainably inhabit and care for this fragile ecology without fundamentally transforming or destroying it? What does it mean to preserve architectural heritage when the very environment that inspired it, and in which it exists, is threatened?
Join preservationists, stewards of Wright-designed buildings, architects, scholars, restoration specialists, and enthusiasts from around the world in Scottsdale for five days of tours, talks, networking & celebrations!
Dates: November 4-8
Location: Scottsdale, Arizona
Hotel: DoubleTree Resort by Hilton Hotel Paradise Valley – Scottsdale
Taliesin Institute Participation
Nov 4
FLW Building Conservancy
Ocatilla: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Desert Masterpiece (curatorial walkthrough x lecture by Jody Crago) Chandler Museum
Scholarship /Collaboration & Convening
Nov 4–8
FLW Building Conservancy Conference
Phoenix /Taliesin West
Research & Insight /Collaboration & Convening
Nov 5: Topic, Ocatilla: on architecture, temporality, and mobility
Keynote Lecture FLW Building Conservancy Conference (Jennifer Gray, PhD)
Phoenix, Arizona
Research & Insight / Collaboration & Convening
Nov 6, 6:00– 8:00 PM “An Ocatilla Evening” (OAD)
Chandler Museum, Chandler, Arizona
Collaboration & Convening
PREVIOUS EVENTS
August 20, 2026
UNESCO/RAMSAR Talk — LCWI Evening Afield
Wintergreen
August 28-29, 2026
University of WI Master of Design + Innovation
Taliesin
September 3 – September 5, 2026 Taliesin Workshop.
Inaugural professional preservation workshop cohosted by APT (Association for Preservation Technology International) and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation’s Taliesin Institute. Get a taste of what it would’ve been like to be a Wright apprentice at his home-studio and living laboratory in Spring Green, Wisconsin
